This is How
by Nahirta
Summary: Callidora Holmes is unfortunately human, and humans do make mistakes.  /A response to the numerous abused!sister fics I've come across today./


A/N: I only recently discovered _Sherlock_, and naturally the very first thing I did was look for fanfiction. In less than a day, I came across three—THREE!—fics where a Holmes sister was terribly abused and determined to hide it from her overprotective brothers. Somehow, in all three, she actually succeeded, despite the ridiculous observational skills demonstrated by both Sherlock and Mycroft in the series. So, I decided to write a little fic about what I think actually would happen. Originally, it was just a little drabble. Then inspiration struck and would not go away, so it's now a truly ridiculous 2100 words. I'm sorry. Anyway, tell me what you think, and I hope you enjoy.

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><p>Callidora Holmes is twenty-two, the youngest and least clever of three children. She isn't nearly as observant (or sociopathic) as her two older brothers, Sherlock and Mycroft, but that doesn't mean she's stupid. In any other family, Dora (as she prefers to be known) would be considered a genius. In the Holmes family, she's considered a bit dim. But she's the baby and the only girl, so she's given leeway.<p>

Each of the Holmes siblings has a specific area of interest. Mycroft's interest lies in politics. Sherlock's interest lies in crime—usually murder. Dora is interested in history and anthropology. She likes to study people, likes to get inside their heads. She's very good at reading people, at knowing what they'll say and how they'll react to given situations. She's an excellent judge of character. She's also, unfortunately, human, and humans make mistakes.

Dora has been dating Jason for a year and a half. They live together (in sin, her mother says pointedly every time they talk), sharing a flat in a middle-class area, which horrifies Mycroft and Mummy. (Sherlock is ignorant, but almost certainly wouldn't care. Almost certainly, because it can be very difficult to tell with him, but Sherlock himself lives in an area that Mycroft and Mummy despair of.) Dora loves Jason—really, truly loves him. She's judged him as an amazing, wonderful man who will never hurt her. Which is why it's such a shock when he does.

xxx

They're having a terrible row when it happens. He calls her an awful name, so she calls him a worse one, and suddenly he's on her, his hands gripping her hips tightly as he grinds into her. The angry energy of their fight becomes something else as he pins her against the wall and shags her roughly (too roughly, a calm part of her mind notes clinically, she'll be black and blue tomorrow). They end their fights this way fairly often, releasing tension and anger that generally had nothing to do with each other in the first place, and usually it's enough to calm them down, the argument quickly forgotten.

The shagging doesn't end their fight this time, though, and he's back to yelling as she pulls her clothes back on—half the buttons are missing from her shirt, she realizes, and she's about to go looking for another one when he realizes how much attention she's _not_ paying. He insults her, something fairly banal that she forgets two seconds after he says it, and she's responding more to his tone than to his words when she snaps back with her own insult. Her insult is more effective than his was, and he lashes out again—this time with his fist. Jason's a big bloke, and the force behind his hit knocks her to the ground. They stare at each other in a sort of horrified silence for a moment, then she's up and on her feet, storming out of the flat and down the street before she knows she's going to move.

She wasn't thinking, clearly she wasn't thinking, because she's standing on the sidewalk with a bruise forming on her cheek and half the buttons missing from her shirt, and that's _not good_. Dora loves Jason—really, truly loves him. She might've forgiven him the hit, because she'd certainly hurt him with her words worse than he could manage with his fist, but there's no hope of that. If he'd apologized, she thinks, she probably would have forgiven him and moved on, never thinking on it again as long as he never did it again, and that would have been that, because she loves him. But she's standing on the sidewalk, and it's obvious to anyone who looks what's happened, so there's no hope of moving on with Jason. This is how her world works.

She hails a cab, ignores the way the cabbie's eyes darken as he takes in her disheveled state, and asks to be taken to Sheraton Park Tower, a high-class hotel very near London proper. She stares out the window the whole way, watching the sunset and trying to hate Jason by mentally listing every negative trait he has. It doesn't really work.

When they reach the hotel, she pays the cabbie and gets out. She walks across the grand lobby and gives her name at the reception desk. She knows there will be a room waiting for her, with her favorite shampoo and body wash in the bathroom, even though she hasn't made a reservation and had planned on sleeping in her flat until less than an hour ago. This is how her world works.

She's been given one of the Panoramic Rooms on the sixteenth floor, and it's lovely, as expected of a high-class hotel. Dora opens the curtains, revealing the London skyline, and strips as she crosses to the bathroom. She spends a long time washing her hair, lathering and rinsing and repeating again and again until half the bottle is gone and her shoulders hurt. She scrubs hard at her skin, not gentling when she reaches the small bruises on her hips and thighs, then just stands under the spray until the shaking stops.

She dries off, braids her wet hair tightly, and then pulls her shirt back on and climbs into bed. She leaves the curtains open, and lies awake for a long time, staring out at the lights of London and trying so hard not to think.

xxx

She wakes to the annoying ring of the telephone, and nearly knocks it off the table when she tries to answer it. She eventually manages to bring it to her ear and mumble something.

"Good morning, Miss Holmes!" a woman greets her cheerfully. "This is the 6:30 wake up call you requested."

"Yeah, thanks," she says, and hangs up. She didn't order a wake up call, but she knew there would be one. This is how her world works.

She rolls out of bed, cheerful despite the interrupted sleep. Dora, for reasons she can never fully explain, loves staying in hotels. Doing so by herself is an unexpected treat that has her practically skipping to the bathroom, humming to herself as she crosses the room.

Then she looks in the mirror, and the happiness evaporates as she is reminded _why_ she's in a hotel. She presses her fingers to the dark bruise on her left cheek until it throbs and reminds herself that she hates Jason. No second chances, no forgiveness—even if he had the chance to apologize, which he won't. This is how her world works.

She has just finished washing her face when she hears knocking at her door, and she crosses the room to open it without bothering to pull on her jeans. The bellboy standing in the hall politely averts his eyes as he holds up a bag.

"Delivery for you, Miss Holmes," he says, extending the bag to her. She accepts it, thanks him, and doesn't give him a tip because she knows he'll have been tipped already.

She opens the bag to find clothes: jeans (in the style and cut she likes, but of a brand three times as expensive as the dirty jeans lying on the floor), underthings (these in her favourite brand), and a t-shirt (the front reads, "If life gives you melons, you may be dyslexic" and it makes her smile). She gets dressed quickly and stuffs her dirty clothes into the bag her new ones came in. She checks her hair, glances around to make sure she hasn't forgotten anything, and leaves.

Dora leaves her room key on the front desk, but doesn't bother to speak to the woman sitting there. She knows she's been checked out and the room paid for, all without any action from her. This is how her world works.

A nondescript black car pulls up to the curb just as she walks out of the hotel, and the driver jumps out to open the door for her.

"Thank you," she says, handing him the bag with her dirty clothes as she slides into the back seat. Her rucksack is on the floor, and she picks it up to look through it. The notebook and textbook for her first class are inside, and she puzzles over the absence of the rest of her books. She knows there's a reason for the absence, so she pulls out her mobile.

_Thank you_, she sends to Mycroft. _Why am I missing the books for my second class?_

The phone chimes her text message alert a moment later, and she has to laugh at the response.

_Your professor is ill. He won't make it to class. You're welcome._

She smiles to herself at the fact that it's a text, and responds, _Have a nice day. Take better care of your teeth._ She knows Mycroft only texts when he can't call, and he only can't call when he's at the dentist, because nothing is so important that Mycroft cannot walk away from it to make a phone call. Mycroft, Dora realized at a young age, is kind of a big deal.

The car pulls to a stop in front of University College London, and Dora takes a deep breath before she gets out. She nods goodbye to the driver, slings her rucksack over her shoulder, and heads for class.

xxx

Several of her classmates express concern at the bruise on her cheek, but she laughs and waves them off with an excuse about fighting over the remote.

"Jason caught me with his elbow when he was reaching for it," she explains. "He's completely horrified—can barely look me in the eye."

She missed out on some of the cleverness and most of the sociopathy, but Dora definitely inherited the Holmes talent for deception. All of her classmates accept the lie easily, and some of the girls she's closer to make jokes about what sort of gifts she can get out of Jason while he's feeling guilty.

Dora smiles and laughs her way through class and actually enjoys the lesson, but she's relieved when it's over. She walks out of the building and is completely not surprised to find another nondescript black car waiting for her. It's a different driver this time, and although the car is identical to the first, she knows it's not the same one.

_Tires_, she texts to Mycroft as she gets in the back seat. It's a little game he plays, changing things to see if she notices—to test her observational skills, which have never been as strong as his and Sherlock's. Still, she's more observant than the average person, so she knows that the tires on this car are a different brand than the tires on the first car.

As the car pulls into traffic, she realizes she has no idea where they're going. She also realizes she doesn't care. (_An appalling lack of curiosity_, Sherlock says in her head. She tells him to stuff it.) The bitter truth falls like a weight on her shoulders, and she tries not to cry as she tries not to think of Jason.

This is how her world works: there are eyes everywhere. Mycroft controls all the CCTV cameras in the city—and probably outside of the city as well. The moment she stepped out onto the street with her shirt missing half of its buttons and a bruise forming on her cheek, Mycroft knew it. And though her brothers care about very little, they do care about Mummy, about each other, and about Dora. So the moment she stepped on to the street in a state that clearly told the story of what had happened, Jason was as good as dead. Because Mycroft _cares_ about Dora, loves her and wants to protect her, and anyone who does her harm can expect it back threefold. Mycroft also _knows_ Dora, (her favourite brands and styles and hotel room, even—Mycroft understands her like she understands everyone else) so Jason can't just be tossed in prison or run into bankruptcy or any other of the thousands of ways Mycroft deals with his enemies, because Mycroft knows that none of them would be enough to keep Dora from Jason.

So in Mycroft's eyes, Jason has to die. Has to be permanently removed from the picture, because while Dora might forgive, Mycroft never does. Last night, Dora's boyfriend struck her. Today, he is dead—or soon will be. This is how her world works.


End file.
